Why this Israeli-American is voting for Harris-Walz in 2024 - opinion

My vote in the coming US presidential election has two components: anti-Trump and pro-Harris. For many reasons, former president Donald Trump is simply a nonstarter for me. I’m not a deranged anti-Trumper in that I can actually give him credit for good things that happened under his presidency, such as the Abraham Accords and Operation Warp Speed. But it’s not really about the nuts and bolts of his presidential actions per se. 

If former Vice President Mike Pence had been president instead of Trump, doing the exact same things policy-wise, it would have been a different story. As with any other president, I would have been happy with some actions and not others, but it all would have been in the range of normal politics.

Two issues for me with Trump are his behavior and his lack of moral grounding. Pence would not have denied the results of an election. He would not have called state officials asking them to “find” votes, and he would not have told crowds of his followers that the “election was stolen,” egging them on to violent protest. He would have shown fidelity to classic conservative values.

When he was president, Trump was surrounded by many good, decent patriots who respected the office and the Constitution and who protected the country from his ignorant, petulant behavior. Now, he claims that he has learned from his mistakes and has promised to surround himself with only MAGA loyalists. There will be no guardrails to protect the nation from his worst instincts.

Trump is given to the most base behavior. From his mocking of handicapped journalist Serge Kovaleski in 2016 to the recent revelation by his nephew that Trump said, regarding his great-nephew with disabilities, that “he should just let him die,” his behavior is disqualifying to me. The danger of having a person with such tendencies become the leader of the free world and have virtually unhindered access to America’s nuclear arsenal should be as obvious as it is terrifying.

Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, exhibits none of these disturbing tendencies. As a district attorney and attorney-general, she has shown that she understands the law and its importance. As a senator, she upheld the Constitution and understood the gravity of that role. Even if I had major political concerns about her, which I don’t, I would still maintain that she would not pose a threat to the foundation of what makes America a great constitutional republic.

Harris and Tim Walz are good, decent, normal folk. In many ways, they represent the best of America. They care about many of the same things I do. They see the United States as bright, hopeful, and full of good, hard-working people, including immigrants who helped build the country and whose hard work and dreams for a better life continue to make the republic thrive. This, as opposed to the dystopian hellscape painted by their opponents.

Other Jews and their thoughts

AS A JEW, I am concerned about the recent rise in antisemitism in the US. It exists on both the Right and the Left. But it’s the antisemitism of the Right that concerns me the most. While I don’t believe that Trump himself is overtly antisemitic, he peddles too easily in antisemitic tropes and associates too freely with hardcore antisemites. 

As Yair Rosenberg writes in The Atlantic (“The Antisemitic Revolution on the American Right”): “Populism and isolationism have legitimate expressions, but preventing them from descending into antisemitism requires leaders willing to restrain their movement’s worst instincts. 

“Today’s Right has fewer by the day. Trump fundamentally refuses to repudiate anyone who supports him, and by devolving power from traditional Republican elites and institutions to a diffuse array of online influencers, the former president has ensured that no one is in a position to corral the Right’s excesses, even if someone wanted to.”

The antisemitism of the Right is far more organized, violent, armed, and intertwined with the power base of the Republican Party. Egregiously, Trump recently explicitly stated that if he doesn’t win the election, “The Jewish people will have a lot to do with a loss.” There’s simply nothing to compare with that on the Left. 

As conservative columnist Mona Charen recently wrote in an article on her Substack (“Why Jews Should Reject Trump”): “The progressive descent into open antisemitism since October 7 is grievously disturbing. But most Democrats are not progressives, and even most progressives don’t endorse the kind of extremism on display at American campuses. That remains the purview of the left-most fringe. They are not allies of Vice President Harris or Tim Walz. They don’t bid fair to become leaders of the Democratic party in the foreseeable future.

“On the Right, by contrast, the haters have been mainstreamed. As our grandparents would have warned, ‘That’s not good for the Jews.’”

As an Israeli who has lived through nearly a year of hell since October 7, I am greatly indebted to the unprecedented support of the Biden-Harris administration. It’s hard to imagine an administration with the isolationist tendencies of Trump-Vance going to the incredible lengths the current administration has.

I know that many believe Trump will act toward Israel as if he’s a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, but for me, that’s not an asset. Blind support of Israel’s right-wing coalitions isn’t good for Israel or the US.

A president who clearly cares about Israel, such as Harris, will sometimes offer very needed tough love, especially as a counterbalance to the extremist, theocratic, and supremacist elements of Israel’s current government. The “loose canon” persona people love about Trump and believe has a protective effect on the international stage could see him easily triggered to turn on Israel with the slightest perceived offense, as he did with Netanyahu in 2020, because the prime minister congratulated Biden on his electoral win. 

Here’s Charen again: “As for Israel, the GOP’s support is robust, for now. But it’s foolish to imagine that it will last. With growing Republican hostility to alliances and America First as the party’s dominant mode of thinking on foreign policy, Israel cannot remain the asterisk for long. Besides, Trump’s unshakable attachment to Putin puts him two degrees of separation from Putin’s pals, which include Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Who knows how that would play out in a second Trump term?”

When a democracy is functioning properly, it forces compromise and moves politicians to govern and legislate from the center. A great example is the bipartisan border protection bill both parties hammered out earlier this year to address the important issue of illegal immigration. In normal times, the bill would have been signed with great fanfare. 

As if to highlight this dichotomy, Trump had his MAGA acolytes kill the bill in order to protect his campaign. Harris, on the other hand, has promised to sign this bill or one like it. She will work to right the ship of US democracy; Trump will endeavor to sink it.

THERE’S A reason why over 700 former US security and military personnel from both parties have publicly endorsed Harris-Walz. It’s the same reason that growing numbers of high-ranking Republicans, from Pence to former vice president Dick Cheney, are either refusing to vote for Trump or are explicitly endorsing Harris. 

Cheney put it succinctly: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia, was more eloquent. He’s a staunch conservative Republican who has also endorsed Harris: “I think it’s important to reinforce the fact to Republicans around the country that just because you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 doesn’t mean you’re Democrat... It just means you’re a patriot.

“You’re doing your duty as an American to step up to the plate and reclaim this country’s future... There are some lifelong Republicans like me who are extremely conservative, but just have seen Donald Trump act in ways that should never be rewarded with another job called ‘president.’”

In contrast to the indecency of Trump and JD Vance, I have decided to wholeheartedly vote for the decency of Harris and Walz. That’s really what it comes down to for me.

The writer made aliyah in 2004 from New Jersey to Beit Shemesh. He currently works as a tech liaison for a financial website.